{"id":8158,"date":"2018-01-03T07:26:22","date_gmt":"2018-01-03T07:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=8158"},"modified":"2018-01-03T07:26:22","modified_gmt":"2018-01-03T07:26:22","slug":"publication-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/uncategorised\/publication-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Publication Day!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today is the best day of a writer\u2019s calendar\u2026 it\u2019s publication day for a new book.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also the birthday of a new writing identity\u2026 Juliet Bell.<\/p>\n

The book is The Heights <\/a>–\u00a0a book I\u2019ve been wanting to write for a very long time. It\u2019s an adaptation of Wuthering Heights, which is one of my all-time favourite books.<\/p>\n

Wuthering Heights is one of those books that people tend to either love or hate. It\u2019s dark and disturbing and the characters tend to also be dark and not particularly likeable. Many, many people die in Wuthering Heights and it doesn\u2019t exactly have a happy ending. While it\u2019s often referred to as romantic novel, I don\u2019t think it is. It\u2019s a look at the darker side of relationships, and for me is totally compelling. I\u2019ve read it many times, and no matter how familiar the story is, it always captivates me.<\/p>\n

\"\"Wuthering Heights is also one of those books that everybody \u2018knows\u2019. Even people who have never read it know it\u2019s about the relationship between Heathcliff and Cathy, and a lot of people have seen film and TV adaptations that focus on that relationship, quite often painting it as love, when\u00a0I think\u00a0it’s really a dark obsession that destroys everyone it touches. That\u2019s what I always wanted to draw out \u2013 the tragedy in the novel. But I hesitated to try\u00a0and that\u2019s where Juliet Bell <\/a>comes in.<\/p>\n

I wanted to set this exploration of the story in the same place as the original\u00a0and I wanted to set the story of isolation and alienation and obsession against the turmoil of the Thatcher years and the miners\u2019 strike. Being Australian, I didn\u2019t think any amount of research could give me the right voice for Yorkshire and that time of great social upheaval. But a casual conversation at a writer\u2019s conference led to a more serious lunchtime conversation and a collaboration with Alison May<\/a>. Alison is a friend, a fine writer and a northerner. She also loves Wuthering Heights\u00a0and is interested in heroes who are not that heroic.<\/p>\n

It took several months,\u00a0a lot of lunches and some cloud storage\u00a0but The Heights was born. We\u2019re both very proud of the book\u00a0and there is another Juliet Bell novel already underway.<\/p>\n

We chose Bell for our collaborative name as a tribute to Emily Bront\u00eb, of course.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s Juliet\u2019s story \u2013 and here\u2019s The Heights\u2026<\/p>\n

The searchers took several hours to find the body, even though they knew roughly where to look. The whole hillside had collapsed, and there was water running off the moors and over the slick black rubble. The boy, they knew, was beyond their help.<\/em> This was a recovery, not a rescue.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

A grim discovery brings DCI Lockwood to Gimmerton\u2019s Heights Estate \u2013 a bleak patch of Yorkshire he thought he\u2019d left behind for good. There, he must do the unthinkable, and ask questions about the notorious Earnshaw family.<\/span><\/p>\n

Decades may have passed since Maggie closed the pits and the Earnshaws ran riot \u2013 but old wounds remain raw. And, against his better judgement, DCI Lockwood is soon drawn into a story of an untameable boy, terrible rage, and two families ripped apart.<\/span><\/p>\n

A story of passion, obsession, and dark acts of revenge. And of beautiful Cathy Earnshaw \u2013 who now lies buried under cold white marble in the shadow of the moors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today the book goes out into the world \u2013 and I\u2019m sitting here hoping the world will think we\u2019ve done the original justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is the best day of a writer\u2019s calendar\u2026 it\u2019s publication day for a new book. It\u2019s also the birthday of a new writing identity\u2026 Juliet Bell. The book is The Heights…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}